


Syrup Slow

by serpensortiaqueer



Series: Grace & Diego | Finding comfort [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Breastfeeding, Bubble Bath, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, Incest, Mommy Issues, Non-Sexual Age Play, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Non-Sexual Submission, Nursing, Pseudo-Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-28 04:41:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18203672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serpensortiaqueer/pseuds/serpensortiaqueer
Summary: Finally latching on is like hooking a new thread of bravery through the eye of a needle. Diego pulls himself back to the warmth of Grace’s embrace, uses her to guide himself home until he can take the bow belt of her skirt between his fingers and thumb and rub to the same rhythm as his suckling.





	Syrup Slow

**Author's Note:**

> I almost want to apologise for this being so very self-indulgent- I just wanted another excuse to bask in their warmth (read the first part, _Bliss_ , to be introduced this Grace and Diego's dynamic). 
> 
> Again, the non-sexual ageplay isn't entirely explicit but can be found if you'd like to read it that way. The breastfeeding is also non-sexual, but does take place between two adults.

Diego doesn’t nurse again on that first day. Grace has all intentions of offering later in the night, but she pops her head around his door frame to find him already dead to the world; a sweet, sweaty tangle of thick limbs and rucked up blankets, barely there snores. Looking like her boy still, in ways that the others have long grown out of, drifted from. She likes that— that Diego always makes her feel seen, useful. That he calls her Mom almost reverently. Grace, after all, had been explicitly designed to be needed, and she very rarely gets to fulfil that beyond eggs and bacon now that she doesn’t have children causing chaos underfoot. Sometimes, her fingers still move with the memory of helping with a stuck zipper or gathering Allison’s curls into a ponytail. Cradling the nape of Diego’s neck had been like finally getting to scratch an itch. 

Still, she lets him rest in the hope that it helps him heal. Backs out of the doorway and wanders aimlessly until she finds a cluttered surface to rearrange. Admittedly, it’s not quite the same. 

The following day is much like the others have been since Diego got sick. Grace steps effortlessly back into the role of his caretaker, with her digital thermometer and cool cloths on hand, and various siblings slip in and out, too. Five drops off a stack of books about martial arts, which Diego actually flicks through until an ache pinches his temples. Allison has him nibbling at a couple of saltine crackers without having to resort to a rumour, though she wasn’t above doing so. Desperate times, desperate measures and all that. Klaus brings a bouquet, because _of course_ he does. The little accompanying Get Well Soon card notes that they’re from both him and Ben which makes Diego shiver and rub the heel of his hand over his eyes. Klaus is too busy frothing the stems in their vase to notice, but Ben, invisible beside him, ducks his chin to his chest and beams at his feet. 

Diego misses functioning like a proper person but thinks he might quietly miss the silly fussing, too, when it passes. The getting to chat properly with Allison without Luther bustling his oversized way in, and the delicate fragrance of fresh cut flowers rather than gym equipment and Neosporin. Mostly, he knows, he’ll miss his Mom and her reappearing every half an hour or so, just to check in on him. All kind eyes and a sense of calm most of his life doesn’t contain. Why would it? Where would it fit? Perhaps slotted into the eerie early hours, when he limps home with split knuckles and bruising blossoming up over his ribs, more black than purple in the low light of his bedside lamp. What if he asked then, for one of Mom’s magic kisses?

Caught up in desperately overthinking how unfortunately _needy_ he gets, Diego is startled when Grace herself glides in to inform him that she’s run him a bubble bath. She’s perfectly prim as always, but her pink skirt is slightly damp where she’d dipped a hand in to check the warmth of the water and dried it off on her front. Upon spotting it, Diego feels his love for her like a physical entity, unfurling through him. Syrup slow. 

“Thanks, Mom, you’re an absolute angel,” He murmurs as he drags himself from his nest of a bed and wraps her in a bear hug before heading off to the bathroom. 

Utilitarian showers are Diego’s standard: ten minutes in the morning, an extravagant fifteen after a heavy day. Scalding hot, with a half-assed squirt of whatever all-in-one body wash was last on offer in Walmart. Maybe it’s a remnant of being one of seven kids kept to a military tight schedule, but it’s enough. He’s always clean. Has had no complaints from others— about the smell of his pits, at least. In contrast, the tub Grace has filled for him bubbles over like a jacuzzi, steaming with her signature scent of lavender. There’s even a row of honest-to-God candles burning on the window sill, fluttering flames casting the room in amber light that Diego feels soft within. Each detail a frivolity that Diego doesn’t have the time for in his itinerary of functionality, of fighting. 

He convinces himself that he tears up because he’s still delicate with illness and definitely not because he’s overwhelmed by the indulgences Grace believes he deserves.

Finally sinking into the tub is just like being guided into his Mom’s arms again. _Come here, my little Diego_ the bubbles whisper, and the water lapping up at his muscles ebbs away all of his residual aches. It rolls around him with the same rhythm as her lullabies, and as Diego tilts his head back onto cool porcelain, he can’t help but think back to being tucked into her like a child. Opening his mouth at her breast. As recent as the memory is, he recounts it through a hazy veil, a mirage of distortion at its edges. It pulls a murmured keen of longing from low in his chest. _If I… if I angle myself just right beneath the water, could I fall back into it?_ He wonders, thoughts abstract and distant, water sloshing onto the tiled floor as he sinks further.

Of course, he does no such thing. The bath is the best of his life, but it’s no portal, and so Diego gives in to clambering bodily from the tub. He’s wobblier than he ought to be, but the room doesn’t tip over on its axis and so he takes that as a win. Plus, the new looseness to his limbs isn’t awful— makes a change from carrying untold levels of tension in the shelf of his shoulders. God knows it would probably fuck up his aim, but Mom hasn’t left his harness of knives out for him, just a fluffy towel and striped blue pyjamas. That they look suspiciously like the ones they all wore as kids gives him a hunch that she’s found the time to run them up all new pairs. And sure, rationally he knows they’re only clothes ( _only?_ Klaus would shriek) but Diego feels so safe once he’s buttoned up the shirt. 

He feels even safer still when Grace greets him in the hallway and takes the towel he’s tossed over one shoulder to tousle it through his hair, squeezing away the last of the moisture there. “There we go, darling, doesn’t it feel better to be squeaky clean?” She sing-songs, bopping him on the nose with a corner of the towel and returning his bashful grin, “You’ve done an awesome job, and I’m sure it will have done you good to have gotten out of bed for a little, hmm?”

Said bed, as it turns out, has had a freshen up, too, with laundered sheets and neatly arranged pillows. Diego makes a mental note to finally sort out Mom a proper bedroom once he’s one hundred per cent. To make a decent start on thanking her for her decades of service. She has a steadying hand on his elbow and as though she can read his thoughts, gives it a little squeeze.

“You do too much…“ He tries to tell her, but she cuts him off with a small shake of her head and a nudge towards the bed—

“I’ve left you some Tylenol and water on the side, son, do you see?”

Obediently, Diego leaves his words hanging in the air and knocks the pills back with a swig of water; drains the whole glass before continuing, “G-genuinely, thanks Mom. Fo-for everything.”

Grace head cocks at the stammer, and Diego huffs out a disgruntled sigh, drops down onto the bed. He’s physically tiring, but he’s craving something before he sleeps, too. His eyes dart back and forth between Grace ( _her chest, of all things, ugh_ ) and his toes twitching against the rug. A little voice way back in his head mutters that he wants to feed, that he should ask, but that voice doesn’t find it’s way into the world. Last time, feeding had been at Grace’s suggestion; without her input, Diego has no idea where to start. If it’s even allowed to happen again. He feels her watching him though, reading his hesitations as easily as a preschooler's picture book. 

She is well versed in analysing each of her adopted children with a kind, deceptively unobtrusive gaze. It takes her just a second to gage Diego’s current situation and sit herself down beside him in such a way that she can lean them both back against his headrest. Ease him into her arms for a proper cuddle, his muscular build no barrier to her taking that initiative, especially when he’s so post-bath docile. Diego doesn’t fight it. If he’s honest with himself, he’s been ready to settle right into his Mama since they’d pulled apart the day before.

“You smell good enough to eat, son,” Gets a giggle, just as it had when he was five, and Grace follows it up with a kiss to his hair, “On the mend, I think?”

So, Diego slightly deflates at that… what if he’s not allowed to feed again, if he is feeling a bit better? He blinks in a burst of panic, nuzzles closer to hide his doubt in against Grace. Nuzzles, roots, hopes, until Grace is pretty sure she knows what he’s requesting, however non-verbal he’s become—

“You’ve still only managed some saltines today though, huh? I think falling asleep on an empty stomach might be tough. Can Mom help?”

Diego still struggles to speak aloud, but he is terribly thankful for her skills in perception. Regardless of whether it was programmed by the Monocle or otherwise. Lightening with relief, he timidly lifts his hand to thumb over the top button of her vintage sweater; wriggles down until he can rub his cheek against the raised floral embroidery patterning her chest. The responding smile Grace tilts down towards the top of his head is all-knowing.

“I thought so. You’re such a good boy, Di. I just love taking care of you.” 

He may be entirely overcome with shyness, yet Diego knows what to expect now, the second time around— begins to fidget in anticipation as his Mom pops the buttons of her sweater. It’s a sensation he usually has when there’s no knife to hand and he’s desperate to channel an overload of nervous energy. It flutters through him. Swoops lower to lay heavy in his belly when Grace gets around to unhooking the cup of the nursing bra she’d chosen to wear. Finally latching on is like hooking a new thread of bravery through the eye of a needle. Diego pulls himself back to the warmth of Grace’s embrace, uses her to guide himself home until he can take the bow belt of her skirt between his fingers and thumb and rub to the same rhythm as his suckling. 

Grace, at peace with one of her children back in her arms, hums another old lullaby. Returns to the petting of Diego’s shorn hair that he’d found so soothing the day before and follows it up with a gentle skate of her nails over his brows and the strong bridge of his nose; sketches out where his jagged black mask would lie were he wearing it. Her fondness for the boy drinking so deeply from her emanates outwards as a glow and Diego's eyes slip closed as he curls towards it, gathering himself inwards as closely as he physically can. Side by side, their size difference is impossible to miss, but laying like this, it’s easy for Diego to pretend otherwise. 

This time, Grace allows her secretly soft boy to feed on her milk for longer— lets him switch across to her right breast when he’s drunk all that he can from the left. She’s so used to all of her charges looking exhausted with the weight of the baggage they’ve been forced to drag behind them (since even before she arrived) that getting to watch one of them melt into such a place of contentedness is golden. If only she knew where each of them would find their ideal comfort, as she’d figured out for him. The tug of Diego’s tongue becomes lazier as he becomes sleepier, and she wants to give him the gift or nursing all the way there. Into his dreams. 

“Oh, you were hungry, huh?” She murmurs, not being able to keep herself from thumbing at the corner of his lips when they curve into a small grin around her nipple, “And so tired now, too?”

Yawning away from her nipple means Diego can’t quite deny it, and so instead he presses into Grace’s hand as it comes up to cup his flushed cheek. Turns to flutter his long lashes over her palm in sweet butterfly kisses and hopes she feels them as he would. He loves his Mom, in the rawest form of the word he’s ever known, and despite how Five and Luther might scoff, he _knows_ she loves him back. Ten fold. 

“All done, Di. Is that tummy of yours nice and full now? It’s bedtime, I think.” She says, explaining herself carefully as though he’s little, five years old again. Anyone else who enunciated to him as though he was thick would get a black eye for their trouble, but coming from Grace, Diego rather appreciates it. Bone tired and milk drunk, he has slipped down to someplace where he’s smaller and easy to persuade to snuggle down under his comforter. 

As admirably efficient as ever, Grace fixes herself right up, but she does not leave immediately. Instead, she lays atop the bedclothes and continues her cuddle with Diego. Let’s him run his lazy fingertips over the embroidered flowers winding over her knit top.

“This is pretty, like you Mama,” He slurs into his pillow, before he’s out like a light, breathing deep and steady.

It’s only then that Grace eases herself up from the bed and tucks him in more tightly, leaving her Diego with one last kiss to the shell of his ear and a fond glance back from the doorway.


End file.
